College of Education
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item The effects of classroom autonomy, staff collegiality, and administrative support on teachers' job satisfaction(2013) Lasseter, Austin; Lasseter, Austin; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of my dissertation is to determine which job-related factors are most likely to explain teachers' sense of satisfaction with their current job. Based on previous research (Fairchild et al., 2012; Lee, Dedrick, & Smith, 1991; Perie & Baker, 1997), I hypothesized that teachers' perceptions of classroom autonomy, staff collegiality, and administrative support would have a greater impact on teachers' job satisfaction than demographic characteristics of either teachers or schools. My study used a dataset of 19,130 teachers in 2,420 schools drawn from the 2007-08 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). The study employed a two-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) technique. I modeled the key constructs at both the individual and collective levels by conceptualizing autonomy, collegiality, and support as individual teachers' perceptions and as the average of all teachers' perceptions in the school. My dissertation found that individual teachers' perceptions of classroom autonomy, staff collegiality, and administrative support had a greater impact on teachers' job satisfaction than demographic characteristics of schools and teachers. In addition, my study found that school-wide perceptions of classroom autonomy, staff collegiality, and administrative support had a significant effect on teachers' job satisfaction over and above the effects of individual teachers' perceptions. The study found significant negative effects on job satisfaction for teachers working in Catholic schools and for teachers working in schools where poverty was perceived to be a school-wide problem. Finally, my study determined that sufficient between-school variance existed in the outcome to justify future school-level policy interventions aimed at improving teachers' job satisfaction. Based on my findings, I recommend that policy makers who are concerned about addressing low levels of job satisfaction among teachers should begin by improving factors related to classroom autonomy, staff collegiality, and administrative support, since these are likely to have a meaningful impact. I also recommend that future research should employ a narrow definition of the outcome focusing on teachers' satisfaction with their job rather than their satisfaction with teaching in general.Item A Mixed-Methods Study of Perceived Academic Autonomy in Japanese Students and Its Relations to Their Motivation(2006-08-04) Tonks, Stephen; Wigfield, Allan; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Numerous studies link intrinsic motivation to positive outcomes such as increased cognitive engagement, task persistence, achievement, and creativity (Ryan & Deci, 2000a). In Self-Determination Theory (SDT), Ryan and Deci (2002) propose that high autonomy, or perceiving that one is the origin of one's own behavior, is a necessary component of high intrinsic motivation. Significantly, in SDT, this relation is claimed to be universal. Studies in Western cultures show that when teachers support students' autonomy, the students show higher intrinsic motivation and achievement (Reeve, 2002). This study investigated academic autonomy in Japanese children, as little work has been done in different cultures to test the claim that autonomy is universal. Some research contradicts the universality notion by suggesting that in Japan autonomy may not be an important factor in students' motivation (e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1991). The current study uses a mixed-methods design to address this issue. Initially, interviews were conducted with 30 5th and 6th grade Japanese students to address the validity of the Self-Regulation Questionnaire-Academic Domain (SRQ-A; Ryan & Connell, 1989), a frequently used measure of perceived autonomy that asks students why they do academic activities. Japanese students mentioned several reasons that were not on the SRQ-A. Therefore, new items were developed to create the Japanese SRQ-A (J-SRQ-A). Next, 179 Japanese 5th and 6th grade students completed the SRQ-A and 208 completed the J-SRQ-A. Exploratory factor analyses showed that the degree of autonomy associated with reasons for certain academic behaviors may be different for Japanese than western students, raising questions about the universality of autonomy. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that a respecified model using the J-SRQ-A provided the best model fit when compared to models using the original SRQ-A, providing further evidence that the structure of autonomy is not universal. Correlations among scales representing differing levels of autonomy were similar to those found in previous research. Positive correlations between autonomy and intrinsic motivation were similar in strength to those in previous research, indicating some support for the SDT claim that autonomy's benefits are universal.